In an unaired excerpt of President Obama’s recent 60 Minutes interview, he conceded that his own campaign’s television ads sometimes go “overboard” and “mistakes are made.” But, he says, “That happens in politics.”
The president’s campaign has resorted to ads filled with blatant lies and gross distortions, but he just shrugs and says, “That happens.”
Yet in the same interview–the part that did air–President Obama said his “biggest disappointment is that we haven’t changed the tone in Washington as much as I would have liked.”
You cannot have it both ways. You cannot pardon your false advertising while at the same time decrying the very sort of divisiveness your advertising helps foster.
Granted, President Obama’s self-professed biggest failures change by the day and the audience. (On Univision Thursday, his “biggest failure” was not passing “comprehensive immigration reform.”) Nevertheless, this has become a pattern. President Obama bemoans the tone of Washington, while being hyper-partisan and running a misleading campaign.
It’s no wonder he can’t find a solution to the “tone” in Washington: he’s part of the problem. At least now he’s semi-admitted it.
In another confession, he told Univision’s Jorge Ramos Thursday, “The most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside.”
This is, of course, the same candidate whose 2008 campaign is remembered for–if nothing else–the word “change.” If he “can’t change Washington from the inside,” he’s destroyed the rationale for his own candidacy.
The candidate that promised change says he can’t deliver. He’s given up. To most Americans, that would sound like a reason to change leaders. It also shows just how empty his rhetoric was four years ago.
His broken promises on change mirror his policy failures, and middle class families can’t afford four more years like the last four years. He hasn’t gotten the job done on every issue from job creation to deficit reduction because he hasn’t been able to change Washington’s tax-and-spend ways. But while he may not be able to change Washington, Mitt Romney will.
The president can talk a good game about bipartisanship and working together, but Mitt Romney actually has a record to support it. In Massachusetts, the state legislature was over 85 percent Democrat. Faced with this divide, Gov. Romney didn’t go on television and disingenuously complain about the “tone.” He found common ground and got to work.
He balanced the budget every year he was in office. He cut spending, and he cut taxes. The state faced a $3 billion shortfall when he came into office, but they had $2 billion in a Rainy Day Fund when he left.
He worked to improve education for all, and during his time in office the unemployment rate decreased to 4.7 percent. That’s leadership. That’s change. And that’s a stark contrast with President Obama.
The president did not just fail to find solutions. He made the problems worse. We don’t need more talk of change–from the outside or from the inside; we need a president who can produce it.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.